moved:
Motion No. 69
That Bill C-26, in Clause 41, be amended by replacing lines 1 to 3, on page 27, with the following: c ) navigation safety, including the regulation of the construction, inspection, equipment and operation of boats;''.
Motion No. 71
That Bill C-26, in Clause 42, be amended by replacing lines 24 and 25, on page 27, with the following:
"ing to fisheries resources;".
Motion No. 92
That Bill C-26, in Clause 107, be amended by replacing line 36, on page 49, with the following:
"establish a protected area for fishery resources in any area of".
Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak to the motions in Group No. 9. I admit this makes a lot of paper to deal with. This must be tiresome for the people at home who are watching, and I know it is a little onerous for the hon. members who are less familiar with this type of bill.
I will talk about Motions Nos. 54, 71 and 92. I will deal with them in three separate sections. What I am trying to make the government understand with these motions, the message I am trying to convey, always with the goal of avoiding the problems we may have with this bill in the future, is to determine the areas where there could be problems, where there might be conflicting areas.
This is a good opportunity for doing so, since the Parliamentary Secretary of the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, who is also the hon. member for Vancouver Quadra, had legal or constitutional experience before coming to the House. In fact, he uses it a lot to repeat this may not be the right place to change the things I am trying to change, as the hon. member for Lévis pointed out so brilliantly.
I want to remind the member for Vancouver Quadra that, of course, according to the first Constitution, fisheries were a federal jurisdiction, but at that time, there was something we did not know much about and that is environmental problems. It was not even part of our vocabulary. When definitions are too all-encompassing, when the words used to describe the things to be managed are a little too vague, it can create problems in some cases.
I am no constitutional expert, but in order to avoid conflicts on environmental matters for instance, I prefer asking the government to use terms such "fishery resources", that is the content of the ocean, rather than "marine resources", a vaster concept.
Why do I wish to make such a distinction? Well, this is still a new concept and, since I do not think this is the intent of the bill, I would not like to see the federal government grabbing the opportunity to spread its jurisdiction over other spheres of activity, besides the main one which is fisheries management.
Indeed, we are now talking about ocean management. However, I doubt that there has been enough discussions between the main partners-the provinces and the federal government-between ministers, and between provincial and federal officials, to agree on wording. According to the information at my disposal, there are different definitions of those words, different interpretations. It is important to stress this fact.
For those who have just joined us, I also want to remind them that last year, in committee, the former fisheries minister, Brian Tobin, recognized that he and Sheila Copps, the then Minister of the Environment, wer like yin and yang. What about it? Surely, this did not mean that there was a clash of personalities between these two people. They had been working together long before I arrived.
Must I conclude that their own officials did not have the same perception of things? This is why I draw the minister's attention to the necessity of being cautious, of choosing a less controversial term. Once there has been agreement on the first term, we can go on to the second.
During the time I have left-and it is a source of concern and frustration to be limited to 10 minutes at report stage-I would like to address the other motions, Motions Nos. 69 and 55.
Motion No. 69 seeks to draw the department's attention to the safety of pleasure craft. Since he is responsible for safety, I would like the minister to extend his definition to include the safety of anything that navigates and not to limit himself to one kind of floating object, that is pleasure craft. I would like safety of commercial vessels to be taken into consideration-something which should have been done when the Coast Guard and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans were merged. The same minister recently set user fees for commercial vessels. I would like to also see him look after their commercial safety.
As for Motion No. 55, this is one presented by the government. I will close with this one just to prove my good faith. I can live with what is proposed in this motion. Its purpose is to ensure that there is no incompatibility with native land claims that have already been ratified, would be ratified, or might be declared valid by a federal statute. That is totally sensible and I can live with that.
In other words, if I am capable of acknowledging that the Liberals across the way are capable of some good things, I would like some non-partisan acknowledgment from time to time that we, too, are capable of good things. And if we are capable of acknowledging that care must be taken with respect to aboriginal treaties, the same spirit ought to be reflected in the letter of the act in view of all that was said in respect of motions in Group No. 8 concerning the provinces.